Adam Smith for Tomorrow

A Conference Celebrating 250 Years of The Wealth of Nations

Adam Smith for Tomorrow

Two hundred and fifty years after the publication of The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith continues to unsettle our present. Long reduced to a theorist of laissez-faire, Smith has been reclaimed by recent scholarship as a far more demanding and troubling thinker—one deeply concerned with institutions, justice, and the moral and political conditions under which economic progress becomes possible.

But what, if anything, can Smith offer for the future? In a world marked by global inequality, ecological breakdown, and profound transformations of the global economy, can the very idea of progress still be articulated in Smithian terms? Can commerce be disentangled from capitalism—or from imperial domination? And can the promise of improving economic conditions be sustained within the ecological limits of the Anthropocene?

Speakers:

· Magali Bessone (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne)

· Pierre Charbonnier (CNRS / Sciences Po)

· Paul Cheney (University of Chicago)

· Steve Pincus (University of Chicago)

· Emma Rothschild (Harvard University)

· Silvia Sebastiani (EHESS, Paris)

Keynote lecture by James Robinson (University of Chicago), Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences.